NOPE · AI and people

AI incidents

Reports of AI-related harm and adverse experiences affecting people’s safety, wellbeing, rights and livelihoods. Explore what happened and the evidence available.

NOPE’s core concern is when AI communicates with a person, acts on their behalf, or depicts or impersonates them. The tracker is wider: it also records consequential decisions and claims about people. Each account is reviewed for publication; claims may remain uncorroborated or disputed. How we review and count cases

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In this selection

Published cases: 6
Countries with reported events: 1; Located 6 of 6 cases · 0 unknown
Languages in checked sources: 1; Recorded for 6 of 6 cases

0Core concern
AI communicated, acted for, depicted or impersonated 6Contextual cases
AI made a decision or claim about someone

These figures describe the cases collected by NOPE. Coverage varies with discovery, reporting and available evidence. They do not estimate how often AI-related harm occurs.

0cases with a recorded lawsuit outcome 0cases with a recorded regulatory response 0cases involving minors

Response counts currently use each case’s principal recorded outcome. Further proceedings may be described in its account.

When events happened

6 cases without a known event year

Cases in this selection, counted once in their first known event year. A series may continue beyond that year. Reporting and collection dates are excluded. NOPE has searched recent events more thoroughly than earlier years, so bar heights also reflect collection effort.

No known event years in this selection.

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6 of 521 published cases

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Event date unknownUnited StatesFlock Safety license plate readers

Perry, Georgia: a former police officer, by then a sheriff's school resource officer, is arrested; USA TODAY's analysis of Flock logs says she searched one plate more than 4,000 times and repeatedly searched co-workers' plates

USA TODAY's analysis of Flock Safety license-plate-reader audit logs found that an officer of the Perry Police Department in Georgia looked up a single license plate more than 4,000 times over 16 months. It was one of six plates she repeatedly searched; two were registered to cars owned by her co-workers and another belonged to her daughter's father. She left the department in April 2025 to become a school resource officer with the Houston County Sheriff's Office and kept searching from her Perry police-issued Flock account for at least four months afterwards, according to the logs. The Perry police chief told USA TODAY the department had not known how often she searched the plates before the newspaper asked. The sheriff's office suspended her without pay on 17 August 2026, and she was arrested two days later on charges of misusing a license plate reader system.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 04/10/2026

Event date unknownUnited StatesFlock Safety license plate readers

Cheektowaga, New York: three police department dispatchers searched a fellow employee's license plate in the Flock license-plate-reader system over a period of months without that employee's knowledge; suspended in September 2026

According to Cheektowaga Police Chief Brian Coons, an internal audit found that three public safety dispatchers of the Cheektowaga Police Department in New York had searched for a department employee's license plate in the department's Flock license-plate-reader system over a period of months, and the employee was not aware of the searches. The department said the behavior stopped and an investigation followed to determine the scope of the policy violation and whether the public was targeted. On 30 September 2026 the chief announced that the three, one of whom has since become a police officer, had been suspended for multiple policy violations. The Erie County District Attorney's Office was consulted; no criminal charge has been reported, and WKBW reported that further disciplinary sanctions had not yet been filed.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Internal Action

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 04/10/2026

Event date unknownUnited StatesFlock Safety license plate readers

Hall County, Georgia: a sheriff's investigator was fired in September 2026 after an internal audit found the investigator had repeatedly used the agency's Flock license-plate-reader system to find the whereabouts of a person known to them

The Hall County Sheriff's Office in Georgia fired a property crimes investigator on 2 September 2026 after its Internal Affairs Unit determined that the investigator had used the agency's Flock license-plate-reader system multiple times to find the whereabouts of a person the investigator knew. The sheriff's office said the searches were personal and had no connection to a legitimate law enforcement purpose. It was the third investigator fired during an audit of the agency's Flock use, and the sheriff's office said the violations would be referred to the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council and the Hall County Solicitor's Office. The press release did not mention criminal charges, and the person searched was not identified.

Contextual tracker case Low reported severity Internal Action

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 4 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 04/10/2026

Event date unknownUnited StatesFlock Safety license plate readers

Mooresville, North Carolina: a police officer is accused of searching the department's Flock license-plate-reader system 31 times to track her boyfriend's ex-wife; charged in August 2026 with accessing computers

According to Mooresville Police Chief Ron Campurciani, a monthly audit of the department's Flock license-plate-reader system found that one of its officers had accessed the system 31 times for personal use, to find information about and track the movements of her boyfriend's ex-wife. The chief said she accessed the cameras at least twice while off duty and logged most of the searches as motor vehicle infractions, and the department said she was not truthful about why she accessed the data. She was arrested on 5 August 2026 and charged with accessing computers, a misdemeanor, and court records show she was released on a $5,000 bond. The chief said the department was reviewing 10 other potential misuse cases and now requires officers to link an active case number to every search. The charge is an allegation.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 04/10/2026

Event date unknownUnited StatesFlock Safety license plate readers

New Bedford, Massachusetts: a police officer is under internal investigation after a Flock audit raised concerns about unauthorized use and a personal connection to a searched plate; the officer's ex-girlfriend, who says she was harassed after their break-up and that police told her that her plate had been searched a concerning number of times, had an abuse prevention order extended for six months on 13 August 2026; the officer says the searches were for a drug investigation, and the department paused its Flock cameras

The New Bedford Police Department in Massachusetts placed an officer on administrative leave in August 2026 after an audit of its Flock license-plate-reader system, begun on 31 July, flagged activity that raised concerns about unauthorized use and found a personal connection between the officer and a person associated with a license plate that had been searched. The officer's former girlfriend, who ended their relationship in early April 2026, says in an affidavit reported by Boston.com that she then received endless calls and messages and that the officer showed up at her home unannounced, once while on duty in a cruiser. WJAR reports that she alleged the department had told her that her plate had been searched in its Flock database a concerning number of times, and NBC Boston reports her testimony that police told her the officer was tracking her vehicle and that this made her feel she was being followed. On 13 August New Bedford District Court extended an abuse prevention order against the officer for six months. The officer testified that the searches were for a legitimate drug investigation involving another driver of the car. The department suspended its use of Flock on 11 August while it reviews the system; its internal investigation is open and no criminal charge has been reported.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Internal Action

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 03/10/2026

Event date unknownUnited StatesFlock Safety license plate readers

San Jose: police officer fired after passing Flock license-plate-reader location data to a relative accused of domestic violence, who used it to find his accuser

San Jose's police chief announced on 11 September 2026 that an officer had been fired after accessing the department's Flock Safety automated license-plate-reader data on his personal phone and giving a vehicle's location to his cousin, a suspect in a domestic-violence case, who used it to locate the woman accusing him. The chief called it 'a betrayal of the public trust', said the officer was placed on leave, criminally investigated and referred to the district attorney, and that the case was submitted to California's peace-officer standards commission for decertification; neither the officer nor the cousin has been charged. The department has since barred access to the system from personal devices and is testing auditing tools. Neither the victim nor the officer is named in the inspected reports.

Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Internal Action

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 16/09/2026

Cases may have several effects and sources. Mixed accounts qualify when they include a reported harm or adverse experience. People are counted within individual cases where sources support a number; we do not publish a collection-wide total of distinct people.

A source’s existence, the experience it reports and AI’s causal role are separate questions. A lawsuit records allegations unless a subsequent finding establishes them.

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Last dataset update: 04/10/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.